Conceptualizing a product is not a piece of cake, and it definitely was not an easy task for us. We wanted to create something that would fit in just right for the Mac users. A substantial amount of time was spent researching, surveying and brainstorming and finally the answer just flashed in and we knew it was just perfect! Voila!! It had to be it!! An image capturing, annotating and sharing tool wrapped up into a neat package.

What can be more intriguing than conveying information pictorially?? Words convey so much, yet pictures convey so much more!! Voila was built to go with the flow- capture, elucidate and share things on your screen without breaking stride.

With oodles of screen capture tools already swarming the market, we had to be different if we wanted to take the plunge into this segment. After a fair amount of pondering, we decided to go ahead with 7 different capture types- full screen, rectangular selection, circular selection, polygonal selection, object, menu and free hand selection; making screen capture a cinch! The idea was to get away with cropping captured images to get exactly what users needed.

The next step was to get the right annotation tools in the palette. We explored a myriad image editing tools available in the market, some of them being very complex, some just too easy. We needed a tool set that would amalgamate with the capture alternatives we had hand-picked. Annotation was the key area where users would be able to illustrate their screen captures; be it an executive creating a complex presentation with flow charts, or a student enhancing his assignment with colorful sprays, or a journalist adding in peppy comments into the callouts; it all had to be flawless! That was definitely the biggest challenge for us. We spent a great deal of time studying every single tool we intended to put into the palette and finally clinched the set with brush, paint, spray, text, shape, arrow, callout, line, mask and stamp options for the first version. We also integrated a few effects as an add-on to the image.

Finalizing on the Share set was an easy affair compared to the rest and we settled down with iPhoto and Mail.

Eventually, we got around to compiling a snazzy tag line for Voila ” Convert words to visual conversation”. As the saying goes ‘Actions speak louder than words’ we thought that the tag line just fit the bill.

All said and done, we’ve tried to keep Voila as simple as possible and have worked out each and every aspect in detail. Having said that, we might have still missed out on certain elements which we wish to polish, more so with your help. Our journey has just begun and we are very much looking forward to your feedback.

This is our first step and we will move on, hoping to get Voila to be a part of every Mac users’ life.